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I am not the original poster. This is a repost.
Originally posted in March 2022 by a deleted user in r/Construction.
Part of why I wanted to share this is that I hope that the deleted user is still a Redditor and might even see this and let us know how things ended up with both the old company and the new one.
24 years with the same company. This morning, I walked out. 01 March 2022
I've been the Director of Operations for a mid-sized GC for the last 4.5 years with this company. Before that I was the General Superintendent, Sr. Superintendent...all the way back to my internship and subsequent hire as an Asst. Super in '98.
Being a field guy from the beginning, I've always stood up for the guys and gals in the trailer. Work/life balance, bonuses, vacations, site accommodations, lodging, etc.
Friday morning I began looking over the Plus/Delta evaluations where I had approved salary increases and bonuses that should have taken effect on 1/1/2022. These increases were for total staff - office and field. I found out earlier in the week that a few of our traveling personnel hadn't received anything.
3 out of the 76 office staff had their raises approved as-is, and 3 had theirs reduced by the partners. I had put in for COL increases of 9% plus an average of about 7%-10% salary, for a total of 16%-19%.
The 3 that were reduced, got a 7.5% COL increase, which put them at the same spending capacity as last year at this time. Not ideal, but they are all 3, just part time and basically gophers.
The problem came when my traveling Supers, asst supers, safety officers and QC got nothing, and my local Supers got 3%-5%. I had put in for 15% to 20% across the board, due to no raises being given during the whole Covid fiasco.
On top of this, all bonuses were denied.
I personally haven't had anything more than a COL increase of about 5% per year since I took this position (except during covid) , and I'm fine with it. I make a very healthy salary.
I called a meeting with the 4 partners to discuss these denials.
The reasoning was that they believe our per diem rates more than adequately compensate the traveling staff, and there's no way that they're using it all for traveling expenses.
In one partners words: "They can stay in cheaper hotels or share a house together, and keep the rest."
The local supers were basically stuck with what they got.
Seeing that I wouldn't get anywhere with them, I chose to leave it at that - ended the meeting and went back to my office.
This morning I went to the office, transfered some files I needed to a flash drive, wiped my computer, phone, laptop and tablet; emailed my resignation, along with emails to my field staff explaining the issue with raises, and informing them of my immediate resignation, and went for a beer.
The reality hasn't hit me yet, that if I choose to keep working, it will be hard to step into the same position with another company; but I don't think it will matter much, once it does.
I don’t doubt there will be more resignations behind mine.
You can proudly call yourself a builder, right up until you have nobody left to build it for you.
UPDATE: 24 years with the same company. This morning I walked out 10 March 2022
You can find the original post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Construction/comments/t4hnub/24_years_with_the_same_company_this_morning_i/
So, the last 8 days have been relaxing, boring, exciting, eye-opening, and a little depressing.
The old company called and I went in and sat down with them on Friday morning. They're not budging on the raises but offered me more money to come back. It's like they haven't met me once in the last 24 years. I declined their offer and went back home. I made sure to return calls from members of the field team that have called me, and I informed them of the meeting and subsequent outcome. It sounds as if they're about to lose quite a few good Supers and other staff.
Beyond that:
We got a little ice and snow last week, so I just stayed in and relaxed. Brushed up my resume and LinkedIn, opened an account with Indeed, did some cooking, and did my best to stay busy.
I got a call last Wednesday afternoon from a recruiter, 2 more on Thursday, and one on Friday. One that I talked to on Wednesday, called again Friday with a counterpart from the company. I've talked to them 2 more times this week and will interview officially in Chicago tomorrow. I'm currently at the airport.
They're an international infrastructure contractor, who does a lot of work overseas and they have data infrastructure projects starting in 3 areas where I speak the languages.
I honestly didn't think I'd be excited about working elsewhere, but the idea of learning new building trends and practices in another country intrigues me. This company hasn't balked at my salary requirements and actually made it seem as if I were lowballing myself.
The benefits package is only a little better than what I've had for the last 10 years, but the opportunity has me beside myself.
Reminder: I am not the original poster. This is a repost.
Originally posted in March 2022 by a deleted user in r/Construction.
My company is currently going through this.
When the pandemic started, we were in a hiring freeze. During the pandemic, we did amazingly, as what we sell is something that became more popular during the pandemic. We did insanely well, but it took forever for the hiring freeze to lift. Everybody was unhappy, but also afraid of losing their job, so we sucked it up.
It's a publicly traded company, and I think the higher-ups got too use to the results were we getting in the pandemic, and now they're chasing the fucking profit dragon. So they're still totally dragging their feet about hiring, and things are getting to the point where the company may actually break down over it. We are not paying enough. When we do manage to hire someone, they often leave in the first month or two, because there's so much fucking work.
Meanwhile, they send out these surveys every quarter asking how we're doing as a company and the corporate office results are in the toilet because of how much work there is. So what do they do? Introduce new health benefits, like hey, we've partnered with headspace, now you can have a free account? Or hey, look at this new app that will help you manage your stress - it will help you see how to restructure your life so that you have a better work/life balance.
And it's like, assholes, the problem is that we're all working 2-3 jobs. That is the problem. The only solution is hiring more people. It's not rejiggering how I do my chores or learning how to cook faster, or that I waste time online. It's that I have 12-16 hours or work to do pretty much every single day.
So now, one of the things we've started doing to be hostile about it is that when they send a survey on ANYTHING we vote "0" on everything and comment that until they hire more people, everything sucks. Want to know how a new system is doing? Too bad, we're too overworked to really know or care, hire more people. Want to know how the new diversity initiative is doing? Well, maybe if you hired more fucking people we'd have time to really pay attention to it. How about how the new meeting rooms are? Sorry, too busy doing too much work to give a shit.
The saddest thing is, bad as it is, it's still better than any other place I or my coworkers hear about. Several of us have been actively job searching for 2 years, and as far as we can tell, we're the best-paid and have the best benefits, but the usual amount of abuse. It's really sad.
The biggest thing they don't seem to get too (which I'm sure you do) is the number of people who will leave out of spite when a company is now offering to match what they would make at their new place. AND will badmouth that company to every person they come across forever.
I remember one company I worked at that was very graphic design heavy, there was this amazing graphic designer who was underpaid. He did his research, showed facts on how much he'd make elsewhere (at least 50% more than he was making there), and basically got laughed out of the room by the higher ups.
So he went job shopping with nothing to lose and got an offer paying him DOUBLE what he was making PLUS sign on bonus, PLUS some kind of structured agreement about future raises. He goes to resign. Company offers to match it. In the meeting about it with the higher ups, he straight up told them he wouldn't work for them again if it meant he was homeless. He called them trash to their faces and told him that he was resigning effective immediately - he'd already packed his desk and just wanted one last meeting to tell them off for closure. One of the last things he said was that when he was interviewing around, everybody was like "Oh, you work for X company? Yeah, they don't know how to pay people what they're worth. Everybody knows that", which he also told all of us too.
That company ended up being sold off to another company because it started hemorrhaging people and they could NOT get anybody else hired. I've never seen anything like it happen anywhere else. I only stayed to the end because I loved my boss and because my work was trivially easy and I was still recovering from burnout from the place that I came from and also knew there would be some small severance package if I stuck it out. I think I ended up being there 14 months and then the company was sold and I was let go with a month's severance, but found a job about a week later paying 20k more, so it worked out well for me.
It is awesome to hear you work for such a responsive place.
We're actually talking about "quiet quitting" now. In my last team TB, we floated the idea of only working 1/2 past when we're "supposed" to stop, instead of 2-6 hours longer. The main reason we want to do 1/2 an hour past is too many people too guilty over the "Salary means you work until the job is done" thing that we all knew we signed on for. For whatever reason, they are in denial that back when we signed on, you worked late some days because other days you didn't have a full day's work, so it all balanced out. Contrasted to now, when a "short" day is working 2 hours past when we should have stopped and there are never any down days.
It's gaslighting. When they asked for feedback on how we liked a particular set of wellness things they offered us, I told them that it's gaslighting.
Because they're acting like the problem is needing a yoga app, or a sleep app, or an organization app and not that the problem is that we have to work to goddamn much. Ignoring the repeated calls for headcount and offering fucking apps is saying "You're the problem, and if you just signed up for this wellness app, everything would be fine for you".
They know the problem isn't that we don't have proper fucking sleep hygiene. The problem is working until midnight - or later!
Oh, I've been pushing us to do that for over a YEAR now. It's amazing the difference though; when I brought it up a year ago, everybody was aghast. Now I'm pretty sure that in a month, when I bring it up yet again between Thanksgiving and Christmas, everybody is going to be ready to have a breakdown and finally prepared to agree to it.
I think maybe you meant to respond to someone else with this?
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I know one of the biggest complaints in my industry is that things like COL raises simply don't exist. I wonder how that is shaking out in the construction world.